Calls for housing rights rise as Germany’s building engine stalls

Germany’s housing industry is turning up the volume on its rhetoric. At the recent Housing Industry Day 2025, GdW president Axel Gedaschko declared the “human right to housing” increasingly at risk, not because the constitution has changed but because Germany’s construction system has stopped producing enough homes. For investors, the message was pointed: without structural reforms, neither subsidies nor political declarations will stabilise a market now drifting into systemic strain.

The GdW’s five-point programme, framed as a push for the human right to housing, is an appeal for Germany to treat housing as critical infrastructure. First, Gedaschko wants a planning fast lane for residential construction, similar to wind, PV, charging infrastructure and fibre. His line “Is the human right to housing less valuable than fast internet?” captured the spirit. For capital, the implication matters. A fast lane would alter approval timelines, permitting risk and project delivery, which in turn shape how investors price residential assets.

Second, the GdW wants to end the bureaucratic patchwork quilt of 400 local interpretations of building law. Uniform digital approvals, ideally supported by AI, are presented not as a technical experiment but as a prerequisite for scalable volume. Fragmentation inflates soft costs. Predictability attracts capital. If Germany wants private money to build again, its permitting culture has to become less artisanal and more standardised.

Third, Gedaschko warned that Building Type E, designed to simplify construction norms, is already stalling. Six months for key points followed by a full legislative year, in his words, is the opposite of speed. Investors will read it as confirmation that a system unable to accelerate its own reform is unlikely to deliver the supply Germany needs.

Fourth, Germany’s subsidy architecture came under unusually direct criticism. More than 90 percent of efficiency-house subsidies have gone to higher-income households. CO₂-avoidance costs are, in Gedaschko’s phrase, “top class in Europe in a negative sense”. The GdW wants a new metric: CO₂ saved per euro spent. This shift would reshape retrofit economics, landlord incentives and the political acceptability of future support programmes.

Fifth, even record social housing funds of €3.5 billion in 2025 will deliver only 40,000 to 45,000 units. “The problem is not too little funding, but a dysfunctional system,” Gedaschko said. He argued that subsidised and privately financed housing both need to be economically viable if Germany is to stabilise supply.

His sharpest intervention was the warning against expropriation and rent-cap politics. “Every euro spent on expropriation is dead capital,” he said . “Every euro spent on new construction creates real value.” (See our further article on expropriation in this issue of REFIRE). He also invoked ex-Bundespresident Roman Herzog’s famous plea for a national 'jolt', arguing that housing policy now needs the same willingness to act.

For REFIRE, the day offered a familiar conclusion. The industry is offering a coherent framework for rebuilding supply, but everything depends on delivery. Without faster approvals, simpler rules and a subsidy system that rewards practical CO₂ savings, the right to housing will remain an abstract promise while construction volumes continue to contract. The national conversation is moving toward rights and obligations, yet the real test will be whether policymakers can translate that language into a functioning development pipeline.